speakingcorpse does AmCop proud:

This is an excellent column, and it is encouraging to see it in the Washington Post. It doesn't say much that AmCop readers haven't said or heard already. But as Bush himself says, why should the fact that we've heard something before prevent us from hearing it again, and calling it news? Anyway, the famous quote that is the basis of this column is worth looking at again:

"I glance at the headlines, just to get kind of a flavor," he told Brit Hume of Fox News last month. But, "I rarely read the stories" because "a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news." Instead, "I get briefed by [White House Chief of Staff] Andy Card and Condi [Rice, the national security adviser] in the morning."

If the country survives and children are still being educated in public schools about things other than the incorrectness of evolution and the generosity of the God who crucified his Son, then textbook accounts of this administration will start with this quotation. (Perhaps it will be remembered not in public schools or textbooks but in quasi-mythological accounts of our decadent ruler, just as we read today about Caligula and Nero.) Anyway, it is so damning as to boggle the mind. It says it all. And we STILL, even in intelligent books openly critical of the Bush "administration," like American Unbound by Ivo Daalder, hear about Bush's ability as a leader. NOT LISTENING IS NOT AND NEVER HAS FIGURED IN ANY INTELLIGENT DEFINITION OF LEADERSHIP. Think about Machiavelli or some other intelligent (or even semi-sentient) political theorist explaining to a prospective ruler, "Make sure you listen ONLY to your advisers, as they are the only ones who are pure and disinterested in their motivations, and can thus give you objectively accurate assessments of reality." It's simply unbelievable. Any leader knows that the advice of immediate subordinates is highly compromised. And most leaders know, of course, that it's important to know what the opposition thinks. But the former point is the essential one. Has he (Bush, Brit Hume, etc.) never heard of the idea of telling the guy on top what he wants to hear? That a president could make this assertion is beyond belief. It is as close as one can come to saying, without actually saying, "I don't give a shit, and I'm saying I don't give a shit, about anything. I don't give a shit about what you think. And I don't even give a shit about whether my policies succeed or fail. And the fact that you will accept that I don't give a shit, about you or anything else, means that I have and will stay in power." In other words, Bush is getting as close as is possible to stating openly the following message: "Because I am the President"--at the top of the hierarchy--"I am the President." There's really nothing else to say. The goal is power, and the best way to protect power is to assert it. People will simply take it, because that is what power IS--forcing you to take it. And they'll like it. Because what's not to like about the guy who is spitting in your face, or shitting in your mouth? This is Bush's "re-election" strategy--to state, as directly as possible, without blowing the game, "Vote for me you stupid fucks. Vote for me because I demand it and have no reason to. What could the person be who makes this kind of arbitrary, demented demand, if not the leader?"

Well, he could be a pile of shit. But what's the difference? A pile of shit that demands respect--such an entity must surely be invested with an inexplicable power demanding of respect. There's no way out of the tautology. Shit rules because rulers have the power to be shit and rule.